Incident v. Impact: Why Leading a Safety Culture Matters 11/10/13 

by SBI, safetyBUILT-IN (a division of SCInc.) is a safety-leadership learning and development company.  

What do we think about safety and what do we believe about it?  Is it a compliance policy that we follow and enforce, or is a culture that we live and lead?  Here is an excerpt from our two-day safety-leadership workshop, “From Compliance to Culture,” that helps illustrate the difference.

The video relates a story I have often shared in my safety-leadership sessions to call attention to the abject deficiencies in how we tend to view safety in an organization.

Too often we speak of safety in the language of incidents rather than impact.  The former allows us to distance ourselves too easily and too neatly from the full impact of what happens when someone gets injured or killed on the job.

But by reevaluating how we view safety and what we believe about it–especially in light of the impact an injury or death has on those who are left behind–we can begin to build and lead a safety culture in more effective ways.  Watch the video below for the full explanation.  

VIDEO http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mQRbxdhMrE

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Remembering a chlorine derailment, puresafety.com, Dr. Scott Harris

It doesn’t seem like eight years since I had a major run-in with a railcar of “skull and crossbones” material, but today was the day.  At that time I was a Federal On-Scene Coordinator (FOSC) with the U.S. EPA in Dallas, TX.  FOSCs are the lead for agency responses to oil and hazardous substance releases and have full authority to direct all public and private resources to stop or prevent a release.

Read more...

Go to the EPA website for a close-up look at this unique event.  I also highly recommend the lessons learned report prepared for the National Response Team.
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